Artifact Details

Title

Catalog Number

Type

Date

Contributor

Bell, Gordon C., Interviewee; Editor

Hendrie, Gardner, Interviewer; Cameraperson

Publisher

Computer History Museum

Place of Publication

San Francisco, California

Extent

171 p.

Format

PDF

Description

Gordon Bell retired as an electrician from Bell Electric, Kirksville, Missouri, when he entered MIT in 1952. He has enjoyed working in academe as a professor of computer science at Carnegie-Mellon University; in startups as analyzer, founder, and investor; at large corporations as an engineer and researcher at Digital Equipment Corporation (VP of engineering) and Microsoft; and government, starting the National Science Foundation's computing directorate and chairing the cross-agency government panel that led to the formation of the Internet. His interests include computers and their advancement.

His output includes the design of various computer systems including earlier mini- and time-shared and multiprocessor computers; books on computer design and startups; founding and funding of several companies; understanding how to capture and hold everything digitally based on recording his own books, papers, etc.; and helping Gwen Bell found The Computer Museum that begot the Computer History Museum.

He is a Fellow of the ACM, American Academy of Arts and Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science and the IEEE, and member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 1991 he received the National Medal of Technology.